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Mike plays favourites from throughout his career like Hound Dog’s ‘Gimme Back My Wig’ and
his own songs ‘Too Much Alcohol’ and ‘When I Get Drunk’, as well as the blues classic ‘One Room
Country Shack’. It’s all very loose and informal and none-the-worse for that but with
McKendree’s piano and that rhythm section it swings like crazy and is a fitting tribute to a

talented player and writer who should have been much better known.
Graham Harrison

Tom Hambridge—Down The Hatch—Quarto Valley Qvr0200

(www.hambridgetunes.com)

Anyone who has been following the modern blues over the last
decade or two will have encountered Tom Hambridge – as
producer, drummer, and/ or song-writer. This is the follow-up
to his 2023 album “Blue Ja Vu” for this rather specialist label,
and it’s pretty much a blues set all the way. From a guy who has
worked with the likes of Buddy Guy (pretty regularly), Keb’ Mo’,
Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, George Thorogood, and Christone
“Kingfish” Ingram, to name just a few, you just know this album
is going to be well worth a listen…

In fact, Buddy Guy repays the favour by contributing to the Chuck Berry-inspired instrumental
‘You Gotta Go Through St. Louis’. Tom’s accompanists here include some hugely experienced
players: Reg McNelley, Tom Burkovac and Bob Britt on guitars, Kevin McKendree piano, and
several others. The sound is rocking and upbeat as on ‘What Does That Tell You’ and ‘Making
Lemonade’, low-down and dirty (‘How Blues Is That’) or mellow but focused in a late 70s Chicago
blues fashion as on ‘Every Time I Sing The Blues’ or ‘Believe These Blues’. ‘I Wanna Know About
You’ has a touch of vintage Dire Straits to it, and ‘What Might Have Been’ doesn’t fit too readily
into a blues bag, but don’t worry about them too much if that bothers you at all. It’s good to hear
Tom as front man, and it’s a very entertaining set that will only enhance his already formidable
reputation.
Norman Darwen

Teskey—White Wolf—Independent

(www.teskeyband.com)

Now here’s a four-piece blues and blues-rock band from Arizona,
though their sound and approach owes much to the UK blues
boom of the late 60s and early 70s. Even a fairly straight blues
such as ‘Upside Down World’ sounds like it should have come
from a UK album around 1970 – but it was recorded in Phoenix.

Brandon Teskey is the band’s lead singer and guitarist and he
cites people like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Rolling
Stones and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band as influences – but
then along comes a track like ‘Lemon Tree’, a straight blues that
doesn’t really sound like anyone else, or the John Lee Hooker-ish stylings of ‘Redemption Blues’.

Even a rock number such as ‘Cast Aside Child’ has a lick that sounds exactly like Hendrix in the
last few notes of the song, and the instrumental ‘Digital Window’ has echoes of Eric Clapton
around the time of Cream. ‘Shadow Side’ is a grunge-y riff-based number with a souped-up 60s
beat- and garage-band feel, and is that maybe a hint of Paul Kossoff in the guitar work?